A federal plan to remove a statue of William Penn from an underused park in Old City has generated a torrent of outrage, primarily from conservatives alleging that the Biden administration is attempting to ‘cancel’ Pennsylvania’s founder.
The National Park Service announced in a news release Friday a proposal to revamp Welcome Park – a paved plaza at 2nd and Sansom streets – and permanently remove the statue and a model of the Slate Roof House, where Penn stayed during a visit to America.
Instead of focusing on Penn, the redone park would showcase the city’s Native American heritage “to provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors,” NPS said.
National right-wing influencers seized on the plan over the weekend, and articles followed, from conservative outlets including Fox News and the National Review, where a piece was published under the label “woke culture.”
On X, formerly known as Twitter, U.S. Rep. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, accused the NPS of “woke whitewashing” and suggested that Congress should take action to block the proposal.
GOP state House Leader Bryan Cutler, of Lancaster County, said Monday in a statement that his ancestors arrived in Pennsylvania as Quakers a few years after Penn.
“The decision by President Biden and his administration to try and cancel William Penn out of whole cloth is another sad example of the left in this country scraping the bottom of the barrel of wokeism to advance an extreme ideology and a nonsensical view of history,” he added.
Online, those on the other side of the political spectrum retorted that Penn is well-represented in more famous statues, including the 36-foot sculpture atop City Hall that is a symbol of Philadelphia and a monument to him at Penn Treaty Park in Fishtown.
Representatives from the park service’s Independence National Historical Park, which comprises multiple properties, including Welcome Park, as part of a historic district, did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
NPS’s plan is not set in stone, and the agency is soliciting public feedback on its proposal through Jan. 21.
INHP officials said Welcome Park, named after the vessel that transported Penn to Philadelphia, has fallen into disrepair since it opened in 1982. The concrete has deteriorated, and many of the original benches were damaged and have been removed, according to the NPS. The park service said the area also lacks sufficient lighting and security cameras.
Initially, the federal agency planned to restore Welcome Park, with few changes to the design, according to a description on a NPS planning website. But the NPS changed course after receiving outreach from the Haudenosaunee, a Native American confederacy. They have since consulted with the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma, officials said.
Some aspects of the park, including the street grid on the pavement and the east wall, will remain, according to the proposal. NPS wants to add planted buffers on three sides and a “ceremonial gathering space with circular benches.”
Panels providing a timeline of Penn’s activities will be replaced with new exhibits in a separate project, according to the NPS.
Anyone wishing to submit public comment on the proposal should go to https://parkplanning.nps.gov. Feedback is not being accepted through social media, phone call, email or U.S. mail.
